To be checked against delivery

President, Colleagues

I am very pleased to bring you the greetings of sixty million trade unionists members of the European Trade Union Confederation on the occasion of this double celebration: of the Centenary of the Russian trade union Movement, and the fifteenth anniversary of the FNPR.

Those events coincide with turning points in Russia’s history towards more democracy.

Trade unions have always sought to take advantage of every historical turn to widen their presence and deepen their influence on behalf of working people.

In Western Europe, the foundation of the ETUC in 1973 coincided with the enlargement of the Common Market to cover many major countries in the EU/EFTA Area. And 1989 saw the beginning of a process of integration into the ETUC of the trade union Movements from the central European countries that are now members of the European Union or are on their way to accession.

Our core business - our raison d’être - is directed towards the European institutions with their executive and legislative functions, and towards European employers’ organisations.

We are currently engaged in a debate being conducted throughout the European Union about the future of our social model. A set of values that combines

  A responsibility of the state for full employment, for proper public services and for economic and social cohesion;
  fundamental social rights: freedom of association, the right to strike, collective agreements; workers’ rights to information and consultation; protection against unjustified dismissals; fair and just working conditions; equality and non-discrimination;
  social protection - universal systems, and redistribution, for instance minimum income and progressive taxation;
  social dialogue at all levels
  social and employment regulation on health and safety at the workplace, of working, job protection; equal opportunities; etc.

The debate is driven by the need to manage the process of globalisation in a way that restores the primacy of politics over markets and thus our ability, as Europeans, to control our own destiny.

So we are not insensitive to external developments in this globalising world. And in particular we are not standing outside changes in the international trade union world.

We have welcomed the moves towards international trade union unification - a challenge laid before the WCL and others by Guy Ryder at our Congress in Prague in May 2003. He drew some inspiration then from the ETUC’s experiment of solidarity within a diversity of trade union traditions to propose that this be translated to the world level. The new international organisation is well on its way (as Guy reported to you earlier).

We are now discussing how the ETUC can relate to this new international organisation. What place can we have by it, taking into account the imperative of autonomy. For us to be able to carry out our work in Europe properly it is essential that we are free from any bind, or from any suspicion that there could be a bind, to external decisions.

And that, of course, also brings into the discussion our relations with trade union organisations in the wider Europe - and with you the FNPR in particular.

An organisational model for Pan-European trade union cooperation is currently under discussion. This seeks to marry the specificity of the ETUC with a concern not to create a two-tier Europe; and to maximise efficiency while minimising bureaucracy so that we deliver what our members need, within the resources that they are ready to give us. That is not so easy to achieve, but we are working hard to find the right balance.

In the meantime, we in the ETUC are keen to deepen our relations with the Russian trade union Movement. There is already cooperation at the sub-regional level, within the Baltic Sea Trade Union Network (BASTUN), in which we have been taking an increasing part. We hope that we will be able to initiate further joint activity next year, during the Finnish EU Presidency.

Jointly with the FNPR we have been pressing the EU and Russian authorities to create a social dimension to the EU-Russia relationship.

It is clear that employers are taking full advantage of the development of relations between Russia and the European Union to press their claims to the full. Earlier this week we saw the biggest ever EU-Russia Industrialists’ Round Table meeting alongside the Summit to advise Presidents Putin, Barroso and Blair on how to create the ‘Common Economic Space’.

We, the ETUC and FNPR, need to develop our countervailing voice. We need to ensure that workers’ voices are heard and that relations are not based only on trade and economic arrangements.

Colleagues, the last century was the bloodiest in the world’s history. The imperial rivalries and the great dictatorships that drove so many millions to their graves originated from this continent.

It is incumbent now on Europe to ensure that world peace is nurtured by us. Strong trade unions will contribute to that peace.

So may I wish you many happy returns on your anniversaries, with the hope that you will see many more in a peaceful world building prosperity, equality and solidarity.